Each gets longer and more detailed, as I defend my position. If length and details are a problem for you, then we'd better end the discussion here.
me: "This is actually why bribes to randomly selected citizens would be easier to catch."
you: "you said that it would be easy to catch the people taking this style of bribe"
I said easier. You misquoted me as saying easy. Easier != easy. We're comparing sortition to the current electoral system. Sortition just has to be better, it doesn't have to be perfect. Moreover, I said, "Many elected politicians have been criminally convicted of corruption", so it's not in fact impossible.
> now you’re trying to argue a separate issue: whether reps will take these bribes at all
> however, your initial comment assumes that they might take these bribes, and my reply is based on that assumption. when you abandon that assumption, you’re not actually responding to me
This is a misunderstanding. Of course some legislators (I won't call them "reps") might accept bribes. The problem is when some don't. When you're trying to bribe a bunch of random strangers, the number who don't accept bribes, even if the number is small, will blow up the whole bribery system and will send the bribers to jail.
Even if there's some level of bribery in sortition — which I believe can't be high, for reasons explained earlier — it would be vastly better than the current electoral system, which is legalized bribery via campaign contributions.
yet again you're trying to argue multiple points irrelevant to the initial discussion: the semantics of easy vs easier; whether it's easier to bribe in the first place; whether sortitioning is better or worse than the current system. this is called the Gish gallop[1], and it is not conducive to good debate
stop trying to move the goalposts
it is difficult to prosecute someone who has taken this kind of bribe, even in a system of sortitioning. do you have a refutation to this argument?
This is pointless, because you seem to lack the capacity to follow a complex argument, and I disagree with you about what's relevant and irrelevant to the discussion. I'm done here.
if you had a refutation, you would have said it by now. as it is, you’ve tried a gish gallop, then thrown your toys out of the pram when it’s been pointed out to you
did you really think I was going to engage you in an exponentially growing series of piecemeal arguments growing less and less relevant with each iteration?
let’s close this by saying that you completely failed - and even resolutely avoided - giving any evidence or arguments that it would be even remotely possible to convict anyone for this, and then tried to prove yourself right in some alternative discussions about: sortitioning as a whole, the word “representative”, easy vs easier, the difficulty of bribing a representative, whether they have constituents, whether I have a correct grasp of corruption as a whole, etc etc etc etc, not a single one of which mattered to the central question of “would you be able to convict an ex-rep for having a sudden upwards change in job?” to which the answer is a resounding and unchallenged: no
> the central question of “would you be able to convict an ex-rep for having a sudden upwards change in job?”
I think the problem here is that you believe it's the central question, whereas I don't. It's a minor issue in the larger question of whether sortition is better than elections.
yes, there is an overall question of whether sortitioning is better or worse, but did I say to you: "the current system is better than sortitioning"? no I didn't. we were never talking about that. if you'd like to discuss that separately, we can, and I suspect we'd agree, but I did not sign up for that discussion, so surely you can see why I only want to talk about the only issue I've ever even mentioned?
what I said was that it would be extremely hard to convict someone for this specific corruption, you disagreed, and we proceeded. if you don't have an argument to back up your disagreement, you misspoke, or misread, or jumped to a conclusion, that's fine, but you're just ignoring it and talking about other things as if you were right. does that seem to you like a rational mode of thought?
>these links:
this is the same thing again. we're not talking about general convictions for corruption, we're talking about convictions for this very specific kind of type of bribery, where your only evidence is a change of jobs
> did I say to you: "the current system is better than sortitioning"? no I didn't. we were never talking about that. if you'd like to discuss that separately, we can, and I suspect we'd agree, but I did not sign up for that discussion
Sigh. Well, I've always been talking about that, and I didn't sign up for this conversation either. In any case, though, here's what I said before you first replied to me: "This is actually why bribes to randomly selected citizens would be easier to catch."
Note that catching is not the same as convicting, and that's not mere pedantry. In order to convict, you have to catch first, and my claim is that in a political environment where the legislators are randomly selected, the kind of corruption you talk about would stick out like a sore thumb. Whereas in our current system, the revolving door between government and corporate lobbying is pervasive, so a former representative getting a cushy job when they leave it not even notable, it's commonplace, the norm. In a sense, it's harder to catch a criminal when everyone is a criminal. If that continued to be the norm under sortition, it would indicate a massive flaw in the new system. It's one of the problems that sortition ought to fix, otherwise we're no better off than before. So as I said, "After a maximum 1 year term, a randomly selected citizen would be expected to go back to their previous line of work." It's automatically suspicious if they don't! Regardless of whether there's a criminal conviction at the end, there would be a level of personal scrutiny regarding the acceptance of post-service jobs that doesn't exist now, especially because under sortition there would be very little if any practical value in the "experience" of a temporary legislator to a potential employer, i.e., political connections, networks, and knowledge that currently take many years to acquire.
On the matter of conviction, you seem to assume that the laws would remain exactly the same as before, whereas I make no such assumption. Rather, I assume that the laws would get stricter, so it would be easier to convict a government official of corruption. Our current elected representatives who make the laws are too easy on themselves, precisely because soliciting money from corporate donors is how they got into office in the first place, so they don't want to cut off their source of power. If somewhat more honest folks were in charge, they wouldn't allow legislators to get away with a lot of the crap that's currently allowed.
Each gets longer and more detailed, as I defend my position. If length and details are a problem for you, then we'd better end the discussion here.
me: "This is actually why bribes to randomly selected citizens would be easier to catch."
you: "you said that it would be easy to catch the people taking this style of bribe"
I said easier. You misquoted me as saying easy. Easier != easy. We're comparing sortition to the current electoral system. Sortition just has to be better, it doesn't have to be perfect. Moreover, I said, "Many elected politicians have been criminally convicted of corruption", so it's not in fact impossible.
> now you’re trying to argue a separate issue: whether reps will take these bribes at all
> however, your initial comment assumes that they might take these bribes, and my reply is based on that assumption. when you abandon that assumption, you’re not actually responding to me
This is a misunderstanding. Of course some legislators (I won't call them "reps") might accept bribes. The problem is when some don't. When you're trying to bribe a bunch of random strangers, the number who don't accept bribes, even if the number is small, will blow up the whole bribery system and will send the bribers to jail.
Even if there's some level of bribery in sortition — which I believe can't be high, for reasons explained earlier — it would be vastly better than the current electoral system, which is legalized bribery via campaign contributions.